The Evolution Of Open-Source Language Models Being Used In Business
by Abdul Aziz Mondal Business Intelligence 08 January 2024
In recent years, we have seen an incredible shift in how businesses use language models to analyze text and image data. More specifically, open-source language models have risen in popularity due to their versatility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
In this article, we will explore the evolution of open source model such as Mixtral, used in business, from its humble beginnings to its current state-of-the-art performance.
An Early History
The first open-source language models made their debut in the 1990s. Their main application was in natural language processing and speech recognition, primarily in academia and research institutions.
As more and more businesses generated vast amounts of text data, language models became essential to classify and extract insights from this data. In particular, Bayesian networks and Hidden Markov Models were two early machine learning techniques utilized in open-source language models.
The 2000s
The early 2000s saw the emergence of more sophisticated open-source language models such as the Stanford Parser and BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). Stanford Parser, which leveraged probabilistic context-free grammars, focused on syntactic analysis of text data.
BERT used unsupervised pre-training to learn contextual word representations, enabling better classification of language data. It is still considered one of the most advanced open-source language models today and has even been adopted by Google for its search engine’s natural language processing.
The Late 2000s
The rise of cloud computing in the late 2000s created an opportunity to develop open-source language models that could operate at scale, analyzing large data sets run on remote servers.
One such model is Apache OpenNLP, which boasts a suite of natural language processing tools that can be customized and scaled to handle text data from various sources, including chatbots and voice assistants. OpenNLP has machine learning algorithms that can adapt to new domains and update in real-time as data changes.
Specialization Of Language Models
Open-source language models have also been available in specialized areas such as sentiment analysis, intent classification, and named entity recognition. By analyzing large amounts of text data input from social media, surveys, and customer feedback forms, businesses can identify specific emotions expressed by their customers and their overall satisfaction rate.
The result is a greater understanding of customer needs, preferences, and pain points. The IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding is an example of an open-source language model that covers these areas and can be customized for specific business needs.
Impact On Customer Service
Open-source language models have also had significant impacts on customer service. Powered by language models, Chatbots are now used by brands like H&M, KLM, and Uber.
These chatbots use natural language and machine learning algorithms to converse with customers, answer their queries, and even help them make purchases.
Benefits Of Open-Source Language Models
The benefits of open-source language models for businesses are numerous. Firstly, they provide unparalleled precision in automating repetitive tasks that take up valuable time.
Secondly, they can analyze and extract valuable insights from customer conversations, guiding businesses to tailor their offerings more effectively. Thirdly, they help businesses scale their operations without worrying about hiring additional workforce.
Final Thoughts
Open-source language models have come a long way in recent years, from their early days as research tools to their current state, adopted by large corporations in industries ranging from e-commerce to healthcare. With the increasing amount of data generated, businesses that can harness this data to extract insights and improve their services and products will be at a significant advantage.
Open-source language models are vital for this, providing cost-effective, scalable solutions to businesses of all sizes and industries. As more research and development continues in natural language processing and machine learning, we expect even more sophisticated open-source language models to emerge and revolutionize how businesses understand and interact with their customers.
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